An anti-war, anti-neo-conservative blog to counter the lies of those who wish to condemn us to perpetual conflict. All this, plus horse-racing, football, books, films, television, and plenty of other topics too....
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Friday, June 25, 2010

Work until you drop in 'progressive' Coalition Britain

It boggles the mind, what ordinary people are having to put up with right now…. I've known Ken Livingstone for decades. To say we are on different sides of the political divide is to put it mildly. But when he said he thought all bankers should be put up against a wall and shot, I felt like saying: 'Hand me the gun Ken. Let me be the first to pull the trigger.'

It's all very well for little Disney cartoon people to leap about gleefully singing: 'Whistle while you work.' Right now, those looking forward to retirement can whistle all they like, it ain't gonna get them anywhere. You'll work until a government of public school boys who've never had jobs in the real world tells you to.

You can read the rest of Michael Winner- yes Michael Winner’s- wonderful piece on the latest ‘progressive’ move from the Coalition government, here.

Meanwhile, the Mail reports that wealthy Tory MP and former investment banker John Redwood has denied telling people hit by Budget cuts to wear more clothes, turn down the thermostat and eat more vegetables.

'If you are living a middle-class lifestyle and your income goes down by 10 per cent you have plenty of options.'You can holiday nearer home and cut out the foreign trip. You can eat at home more than in restaurants. You can trade down for a cheaper car.He added: 'You can buy more of the value items at the supermarket and put more vegetarian dishes into menus.'You can discover home entertainment to keep the leisure bill down. You can turn down the thermostat a little and put on a jumper.'

12 comments:

That is a very selective editing of Redwood's remarks - reading that bit you would not realise he wasn't actually saying he wanted any individual to do that but drawing a comprison between what individuals do when the money runs out & what the bloated & parasitic government sector, spending 535 of the money in the economy & producing none of it, has been doing.

I would also be interested in knowing, by comparison, what "real world" jobs Ken Livinstone has held? Has he ever done anything 1,000th as real worldly productive as the bankers that obscene genocide supporting Nazi wants to murder?

That is a very selective editing of Redwood's remarks - reading that bit you would not realise he wasn't actually saying he wanted any individual to do that but drawing a comprison between what individuals do when the money runs out & what the bloated & parasitic government sector, spending 535 of the money in the economy & producing none of it, has been doing.

I would also be interested in knowing, by comparison, what "real world" jobs Ken Livinstone has held? Has he ever done anything 1,000th as real worldly productive as the bankers?

I say we investigate and shut down these offshore banking havens that would save billions of dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bank bailout money is stored in offshore accounts then brought back to buy industry and other things on the cheap like how foreign capital was used with aligned frontmen Oligarchs in Russia and Ukraine after the engineered “shock therapy” after the fall of the USSR or in Serbia after the NATO bombing of 1999.

I also think it is about time we had an international minimum wage so mega companies won't just outsource their jobs overseas for cheaper labour.

Looks like austerity for some, profligacy for others, eh? For a good discussion of the current system of plutonomy (an economy run for the benefit of the rich), I submit this article by John Médaille from the Distributist Review:

" The private sector has to sell more abroad and consume less at home."

Yes, they can sell lots to India and China, who make the stuff anyway, so it will save transportation costs. They don't get paid much though, do they? Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much of a role for the British people in this scheme, now they've got the E. Europeans to do the cleaning and building work.

John Redwood has got form denying statements which are down in black and white.The most famous is his spectacularly ill -timed conclusion to the Conservative Policy Review of August 2007"We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance,as it the lending institution rather than the client taking the risk." Confronted with this statement by Geoffrey Robinson on Newsnight during the subsequent crisis JR completely denied it ,bellowing and intimidating Robinson who thanks to the lax supervision of the discussion was left shrugging his shoulders in a What can you do? gesture.JR conducts his blog like a gentleman but he does not acknowledge his mistakes.

Well, Larry Elliot of the Guardian, the scathing critic of the role the City has played in creating an unstable rentier capitalism, divides the economy into the bloated private bankers who feed of the state and the people-the Olympians-but also the hordes on non-essential Functionaries-those in a blaoted public sector ramped up by New Labour.

The fact is that Redwood is not entirely wrong to suggest that the UK has been living beyond its means. There is this cheap populism that states it's "Them" who are to blame. But "we" colluded in the fantasy.

The problem is that Redwood clings to outdated neoliberal ideology-cuts are ideologically imposed and market mechanisms injected wjere they simply do not work-railways, hospitals etc.

But De Tocqueville had it right when he said people often get the governments they deserve. The next few years were always going to hurt after the debt binge and Redwood is , in theory, calling for more personal responsibility.

Saving will have to be made by cutting down on non-jobs ( tobacco health policemem "diversity co-ordinators etc etc ) whilst trying to stimulate the economy in other ways and doing what the Tories seem unable to-curtain the City and the Masters of the Universe.

Long term reform of Britains's political & economic system must happen now or the future looks incredibly bleak.

All this crap about the bloated public sector:at least they pay their taxes (They have to!)The private sector has a whole industry dedicated to tax avoidancefor the rich while there is a generation of erstwhile working-class geezers wandering around in white vans working for cash in hand,and intimidating old ladies,which does n't pay tax either.It is ,as usual,the non-tax payers who complain most about taxation and the mixed economy.

Is it so easy to divide people into productive and unproductive,with all the less productive conveniently corralled into the public sector?Is a teacher at Eton (fees 38k) more productive than a teacher at the comp (average spending per pupil 4k or 10% of Eton)?Or was Nick Robinson more productive as a reporter when at ItV before moving to BBC?In the heyday of capitalism a firm like GWR provided health care,housing and other'social services' for its workers.It was not less productive than its rivals.After the war local authorities relieved big firms of the necessity of housing their workers and keeping them healthy (in the Boer war,it was impossible to recruit in certain areas because the general standard of health had degenerated so far).The post-war idea was that the private firms would bring work to an area and the public sector would complement the arrangement with social infrastructure back-up.This arrangement was not "unproductive" ,any more than the GWR provision of houses,and doctors was in Swindon

"Is a teacher at Eton (fees 38k) more productive than a teacher at the comp (average spending per pupil 4k or 10% of Eton)?"

Almost certainly or are you saying that the number of Etonians in top jobs is because of the genetic superiority of the upper classes??

Note that the Etonian fees include full board & are actually only about 8 times the local comp. Many private school's fees are barely more than the state spends.

Your contention that council housing has been especially "productive" because it has allowed people to hold jobs is precisely the opposite of the truth - areas of multi-generational unemployment, deprivation & dependency are virtually exclusively council estates.

Since every journalist at the BBC is a corrupt instrument of fascist propaganda provably willing to tell absolutely any lie & censor any fact to promote racial gernocide & worse I do not consider it value for our money though I can see why the state does.

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About Me

I am a journalist, writer & broadcaster, based in the U.K. I am a regular pundit on foreign/current affairs on RT , Voice of Russia and the BBC.
I am the author of 'Stranger than Fiction', a new biography of Edgar Wallace, which is available here http://goo.gl/o2cZze
I am a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines in UK & overseas including The Guardian, The Week, Morning Star, Daily & Sunday Express, The Mail on Sunday & The Spectator.
My work has also appeared in The Fleet Street Letter, The Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Australian and in publications as diverse as The American Conservative, Pravda, Woman's Weekly & the Racing Post.
I am strongly opposed to the neo-conservative war agenda -and believe in the urgent necessity of a left-right anti-war coalition.
On domestic issues I support re-nationalisation of the railways and public utilities (I am co-founder of The Campaign for Public Ownership), a new top rate of tax on the very wealthy, free care for the elderly, a free National Health Service including the restoration of NHS dentistry, and protection of the Green Belt and the countryside.
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @NEILCLARK66